Francis
Harold ("Frank") Howcutt was born at 7 Waterworks Road, Brixton
Hill on 16 July 1911. He was the third of the five children of Mark and Emma
Eliza (Bott) Howcutt. His grandfather was Mark Michael Howcutt.

Only one
of Frank's grandparents was still alive when he was born - his maternal
grandmother. Her maiden name was Alice Crisp (1854-1938) and her first
husband was Frank's grandfather Jesse Bott (1850-1891). After Jesse's death,
Alice married Arthur Burdett (1859-1942). Alice and Arthur lived at Naseby.
Frank's family kept in regular contact with them and with his mother's four
sisters. The following pictures show Frank as a child and also his
parents.

Frank's
parents had married at his mother's home village, Naseby, Northamptonshire in
1903. They first set up home at Harlestone, also in
Northamptonshire, where their first child Ernest Mark ("Mick") was
born. By 1908, the family were living at Gwyn House, 4 Acre Lane, Brixton,
across the road from the site where Lambeth Town Hall was constructed
[1].

The
family's home at the time Frank was born was a cottage at the end of a
terrace of seven similar dwellings, all of which were owned by Mr Gyatt. Upstairs were two rooms, one of which was only
just large enough to be filled by a double bed. Downstairs was a living room
and small scullery. The outside toilet was next to the gate leading from the
road into the front garden. There was no back garden at all. The cottages
were situated at the end of a road that led off the west side of Brixton Hill
next to the “George IV” public house and originally called “George Place”.
Frank’s home was in due course renamed as 7 Waterworks Road.

Frank's
father had started his working life as a groom. By about 1911, he was
employed at Ball's animal hospital, which was a short way up on the west side
of Brixton Hill from its junction with Waterworks Road. In about 1914, Mark
Howcutt began work as a tram driver, which he continued until his retirement
in 1945. He enlisted in the Army in May 1915, spending a total of 3 years and
9 months as a driver in France [2].

In 1913, a fourth
child of the family, Leslie Arthur, was born at Lincoln Street, Kingsthorpe.

In 1914,
Frank's older sister Dorothy Alice joined her brother Ernest Mark (“Mick”) as
pupils at a little school in Somers Place, which is a short distance beyond
the other side of Brixton Hill from Waterworks Road; in due course, they both
moved on to New Park Road school (now Richard Atkins school), which is near
the top of Brixton Hill – see the picture to the left.

Zeppelin
airships had been spotted over Streatham as early as 1914. By 1916, air raids
were taking place in London and it was decided that Frank and his brothers
and sister would go to live at the home of their mother's sister "Aunty
Kate" [3] and her husband Ernest Wadsworth at the house now known as 4
Welford Road at Chapel Brampton, which is a village some four miles north of
the centre of Northampton. This house was owned by Lord Spencer, whose estate
included much of the land in the area. Frank's cousin, Mabel Florence
Wadsworth (1901-1993) and her husband Albert Parker Dartnell
(1897-1987) lived in the house for over 60 years after they married in 1923.
Its distinctive lattice windows are to be seen in the background of many
family photographs.

Mabel
started work at the Co-op in Northampton and went to live with "Aunty
Min" and her family at Kingsthorpe [4]. For the two years when the
Howcutt children lived at Chapel Brampton, their mother and aunt took turns
to stay at home or go away to work. For some of the time, Aunty Kate worked
as the cook at the house of a doctor at Northampton Hospital. At other times,
Frank's mother was in service as a maid at Teeton
Hall, about four miles from Chapel Brampton. Her afternoon off was on
Thursday, when she would walk to and fro to visit her children, returning in
winter by the light of a lantern. It was at Chapel Brampton that Frank
started school.

The
following pictures were taken at Mabel and Albert's wedding on 18 August 1923
and show the wedding breakfast, which was held at Chapel Brampton
school, and Leslie (left) and Frank (right) outside 4 Welford Road.

After his
family returned to Waterworks Road, Frank attended New Park Road school,
where he was in the top class for the last two years before leaving on 22
July 1925, at the age of 14 [5]. In December 1924, he won a trade
scholarship to continue his education at the School of Engineering and
Navigation at Woolwich but was not able to take it up because of the cost of
fares.

Between
leaving school and enrolling in the RAF at the start of the Second World War,
Frank had a number of different jobs. In January 1926, he started work with S
C Boyle, a bookseller at 284 Brixton Hill and remained there for over three
years, moving on in July 1930 to the role of collector for Simpkin Marshall Limited, who were wholesale booksellers
based at Stationers Hall Court in the City of London. After seven years with
that firm, Frank obtained a post travelling for Stower
& Dubinski, a cosmetics supplier of 8 Park
Street, Baker Street. From March 1938 until he was called up for military
service, Frank worked as a storekeeper for the British & Foreign Bible
Society at Queen Victoria Street.

In his youth, he
was a member of a scouting group and also sang in the choir at St Matthias
church, Upper Tulse Hill. An accomplished dancer, there was a stage at which
he attended as many as eight events in a single week. His other interests
included football, hockey, squash cricket, tennis and golf; on 10 July 1937
he won the W E Williams medal at St Mellons Golf
Club, Cardiff.

The 1933
electoral register records Frank as living with his parents at 7 Waterworks
Place. By 1936 he had moved to 36 Holmewood Road,
where he lived in the same house as his sister and brother-in-law Dorothy and
Charles Edison. They were still registered there in 1938 but by the following
year had moved to 30 Felsberg Road. All these
addresses were within a few minutes' walk of each other.

Early in
the Second World War, Frank enlisted in the Royal Air Force, his date of
calling up being 23 October 1940. For much of the time, he was stationed at
RAF Binbrook, Lincolnshire, where his duties
included training staff in safety equipment and air sea rescue techniques. He
was promoted to Corporal on 14 April 1943. For two years, he served on the
Airmen's Welfare Committee at Binbrook and spent
much of his spare time in organising entertainments and station functions.
Frank was demobilised in 1945, with his release leave coming to an end on 26
December. Frank was mentioned in dispatches, as reported in the "London
Gazette" on 1 January 1946.

After his
return to civilian life, Frank lived at 19 Hartington Court, Stockwell and at
36 Gracefield Gardens, Streatham. From 1946 to
1948, he was employed as house manager and club secretary at the Embassy
Theatre, Swiss Cottage.

On 13
September 1947, he married Eileen Gladwys Dalby at
Lambeth registry office. She was the daughter of Ernest Edwin (1890-1947) and
Amelia Mary Annie (Read) Dalby (1889-1971) of West Norwood. Frank and Eileen had
three children - Francis, who was born when they were in Africa, and Felicity
and Nigel who arrived after their return to London.

In October
1948, Frank took up a post with the Overseas Food Corporation, which ran the
"ground nuts scheme" in East Africa. This government project aimed
to develop the economy of the area and provide Britain with new sources of
raw material for margarine and other edible fats. The headquarters of
the scheme was Kongwa, Tanganyika (now Tanzania),
which is about 60 miles from Dodoma and 240 miles inland from Dar es Salaam. At first, the staff at Kongwa
were housed in tents.

Vickers aircraft G-AHPI

The
Overseas Food Corporation had a contract with Hunting Air Travel under which
the company ran a “London (Bovington) to Dar es Salaam” service. The plane illustrated was acquired
new by Hunting in 1946 and would have been the one on which Frank travelled
out to Africa. Eileen went out from England to join Frank in October 1949. By
that time, Hunting Air Services had bought an additional four Vickers
aircraft, so it is not certain precisely which plane Eileen travelled on but
the picture shows its appearance in any case. In a letter home sent to her mother and
brother after her arrival Eileen provided a detailed account of her journey
out to Africa.

Frank and
Eileen initially lived in one of a row of bungalows at Kongwa
known as "the flats", which were served by communal eating
facilities. During 1950, they moved to a bungalow at Biergarten,
about 17 miles by a "trace" dirt road from Kongwa
itself.

Frank was in charge
of the Regional Workshops Stores at Kongwa.
However, the ground nuts scheme as a whole was not a success and the family
returned to England early in 1951, flying to Dar es
Salaam and then travelling on the "Warwick Castle" around the coast
of southern Africa with stops at Beira, Lorenzo Marques (now Maputo), Durban,
East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, St Helena and Las Palmas before
arriving at Southampton on 12 March 1951.

During the
1950s, Frank ran his own toy shop at Wimbledon. For the remainder of his
working life, he was engaged as an industrial textile fibre consultant.

His mother
had passed away at Dulwich Hospital in 1943 and his father remained at 7
Waterworks Road until it was demolished in about 1953. Mark survived until
the age of 85, dying at Tooting Bec Hospital in
1965. Both of Frank's parents are buried at Lambeth Cemetery, Blackshaw Road, Tooting.

An
enthusiastic Rotarian for many years, Frank was president of West Norwood
Rotary Club in 1979-80. He was a trustee of the Portal Trust alms houses at
Royal Circus, West Norwood and also of West Norwood Rotary Housing
Association which ran a sheltered housing scheme at Chatsworth Way.

For the
last 50 years of his life, Frank lived in West Norwood. Through most of his
nine decades he enjoyed good health, although the last few years were clouded
by Alzheimer's disease. He died at Kings College Hospital, London on 15
August 2001. His ashes were buried at Brixworth churchyard on 9 December
2001, close to the tombstones of his three times great grandfather, William
Howcutt (1726-1782) and of his five times great grandfather, Thomas Ward
(1670-1731).

This
address was delivered by his son-in-law, Robin Gaff, at Frank's funeral which
was held on 23 August 2001 at West Norwood Crematorium.

"Unlike
many of you, I had, as his son-in-law, only known Frank for nearly 30 years –
the last third of his life. However, in many ways, I felt I had known him
forever.

Frank
was, to all appearances, an ordinary man, in the sense that he was an
unassuming person who never thrust himself forward. He was by no means an
intellectual – he was a very practical man, whose gifts, which have been
inherited by at least some of his descendants, were very much of that order.

He
was however a very intelligent man. Like many of his generation, despite
passing the necessary exams, his family circumstances prevented him from
taking advantage of secondary or higher education. He belonged to the
generation which, in the words of Neil Kinnock, “built the platform” on which
my generation and subsequent ones were able to stand, and he was immensely
proud that his son and later his grandson went to Cambridge University and
were successful there.

Frank
had a wide range of abilities and interests, including “putting things right”
(I would rather call it that than “DIY” which conjures up the wrong sort of
image), sport in his youth as a player and organiser of junior football
leagues, dancing (almost throughout his life), the theatre – he was a
founding member of the South London Theatre Centre, where he was followed
both by two of his children and one of his grandchildren – and, of course,
Rotary. He gave distinguished service to his local club, serving as Secretary
and as President, and helping to administer Rotary Lodge, which as many of
you will know provides sheltered accommodation for the elderly of this
locality.

He
also pursued a variety of careers, including a spell of business on his own
account – but Frank was not a businessman: he was far too concerned to help
others rather than himself to be very successful in business. His main skill
was his ability to get on with other people, from whatever nationality or
background they might be – which made him such a valuable employee to his
last company that he continued working for them into his eighties.

No
one I have ever met personified the Rotary ideal of “Service before self”
more than Frank. He loved to help other people: nothing ever seemed to be too
much trouble for him, and he derived enormous satisfaction from giving others
a helping hand when it was most needed.

He
lives on, of course, and will continue to do so – in his three children, his
eight grandchildren, one of whom I cannot look at without seeing Frank, and
his two great-grandchildren; one of whom, Frank, who was specifically named
for and after him, and whom he lived long enough to begin to get to know.

I
said to begin with that Frank was an ordinary man – but his selflessness, and
his kindness to others made him truly extraordinary. He was a fine English gentleman,
the salt of the earth, and I am deeply honoured to be able to celebrate, with
you here today, his life."